As early as 2003, Dongfeng and Nissan successfully entered into a joint venture, which proved that Dongfeng Commercial Vehicle has the potential to compete with global automobile companies. Dongfeng people know that to achieve the goal of internationalization strategy, cooperation with international giants is obviously more effective than their own. Of course, cooperation is pluralistic.
At the beginning of last year, Dongfeng Group and the Volvo Group formally reached a strategic cooperation agreement. One of the world’s largest international commercial vehicle alliances is ready to go. Earlier this year, the joint venture project was formally approved by the National Development and Reform Commission. The new Dongfeng Commercial Vehicle Co., Ltd., a joint venture established this year, will be established in Shiyan, and Dongfeng Commercial Vehicle will enter the international arena with another brand new identity.
In the past 10 years, Dongfeng Commercial Vehicle Co., Ltd. had a joint venture with Nissan through its parent Dongfeng Co., Ltd. The commercial vehicle company's bones were fully integrated into Nissan's lean production method (NPW), and Dongfeng Commercial Co., Ltd. built on this basis. Car production method (DCPW). Today, it is about to disengage from the "matrix." Most of its business and assets will be transferred to the new company Dongfeng and Volvo will jointly venture into. This also means that with what they have learned, thought about, and created in the past 10 years, Dongfeng Commercial Vehicles will once again challenge new heights.
"China's east wind, the world's east wind." This vision of Dongfeng, which has long been familiar in the industry, strictly speaking, has only completed the first half, and the latter half is now destined to be a difficult road. Even if all Chinese companies are aware that “going to the world†is an inevitable trend, there are few successful people on the road. There are fewer successful people, meaning that there are fewer models to learn from.
Nissan is not only an indispensable partner but also an important teacher of enlightenment in the international game of Dongfeng Commercial Vehicles.
"When the joint venture was established in 2003, Dongfeng had no money. We only took out the best commercial vehicle assets." Zhu Fushou, general manager of Dongfeng, frankly stated that the frustration of that year is now a very correct strategy. . The Nissan passenger vehicle project can be brought in, and the Dongfeng commercial vehicle has rapidly changed from the traditional state-owned enterprise system to the marketization, and on this basis, it has achieved innovation and beyond.
For nine consecutive years, Dongfeng commercial vehicle sales ranked first in the country. In 2010, it even surpassed Daimler and won the global sales championship. In 2012, it ranked second in the world.
But at the beginning of the joint venture, Nissan was questioned. Because it does not have the basis and experience in the production and operation of commercial vehicles, what kind of difference can this Japanese company bring to the origin of Dongfeng?
"Manage!" Discussed with any Dongfeng people, and the answers were astonishing. Invisible things always take time to prove.
“When it comes to change, it should be the refinement of corporate management. In the past, it was more of a qualitative concept, relying on intuition and experience. But after the cooperation, we first learned from the Japanese that we use data to speak, regardless of the arrangement of work. Or check the work, very simple, through data validation.†Hu Chenguang, director of the QCD Improvement Department said.
The so-called QCD is quality, cost and delivery time. This idea was not shared by Dongfeng Commercial Vehicles before the joint venture. As a new joint venture after the joint venture, QCD is responsible for importing and learning the advanced management methods of Nissan. Second, it must make timely improvements according to market conditions.
Zhang Ge, head of Dongfeng Commercial Vehicle Frame Plant, directly used the data to explain: “In terms of efficiency improvement, we originally produced 300-400 frames per day, but last year we created a historical record and produced 760 units per day. At the same time, employees and costs have not increased but have decreased. This is the intuitive change that QCD has brought us.â€
Yang Guohua, a grassroots employee who has worked for Dongfeng for 25 years, still remembers that when the production capacity was out of line with the market demand, users had to wait for several months for the car to be delivered. The sales department could often see users lining up for the fight. The scene of a commercial vehicle. And now, the product delivery cycle is no more than a week.
“In the past, our front-line staff would do, would say, but it may not necessarily be written. Today, we must organize our management experience into language, form a memory, pass it down, and form a unified standard. This is a key factor in testing our personal skills. Yang Guohua said.
Third, in many automobile joint ventures in China, the integration of ideas has always been a big issue, testing the degree of mutual trust. Unable to come together, eventually ended in dissociation.
Nissan and Dongfeng have also had arguments. However, from the perspective of 10 years of development, Dongfeng can be said to apply the concept of transnational corporations to the most localized enterprises. In the cases collected by national ministries and related business schools, the joint venture between Dongfeng and Nissan became a typical sample.
At the beginning of the joint venture, Dongfeng commercial vehicle owners in Dashan were full of worrying emotions. They are the foundation of the east wind. They define themselves as the simple working class struggling hard, are accustomed to drinking and drinking, and are also accustomed to fraternizing. With regard to the arrival of Japanese partners, they have no sense in their hearts. Just as in 2000, when Nissan and Renault formed a global alliance in the early days, different voices spread everywhere. The collision of ideas even led many people to question the original intention of the alliance.
In fact, Dongfeng Commercial Vehicle Co., Ltd. does not simply introduce the Nissan method, but effectively integrates the Japanese management methods into its own mechanism. For example, the human resources system introduces the Nissan modernization system in terms of wages, mechanisms, education, employee benefits, etc., but at the same time retains the labor union organization and the employee representative assembly system, strengthens the company's party organization construction, and establishes a regular meeting mechanism between the president and the labor union. "Running the enterprise with the working class" is exactly what China is all about.
Over the past 30 years since China’s reform and opening up, the rapid advancement of the modern enterprise system has shown a lagging position compared with the rapid development of the economy. When everyone shouted the slogan “Go global and be a world-class companyâ€, they discovered that even the most basic management was not up to the standard. Only by internationalizing management can we have an internationalized thinking and internationalized layout. Otherwise, everything is empty talk.